Intel Valued As Though New Technologies Will Bust, But I Disagree [View article]

My mistake - you did not in fact suggest that.

High end servers - a fair point - x86 did take over - but you are talking about a situation where x86 was the lower end product and was "good enough" to do the job and the flexibility won the day. Intel's x86 chips are no longer that product. x86 is not a software platform against hardware platforms. ARM chips are just as flexible, and many embedded systems are flexible enough for their simple requirements.

I said 5%. If you think 5% of the total gold in storage can't easily be sold, you are in fantasy land.

Gold was important in the past. As were horses. Now its just a big game of musical chairs and the chinese government are a deciding factor of sorts. It might go to 5000, it might go to 500. Good luck relying on the mental state of the chinese government.

Intel Valued As Though New Technologies Will Bust, But I Disagree [View article]

Apple replaced Blackberry with an x86 chip huh? You don't have even the foggiest idea of what you are talking about right?

Let me guess - you can't actually name one single market where such x86 conversion happened. And for some reason, you think that embedded chips can't be programmed? Right. I'm sure all the people making a nice living programming embedded systems in c will find that news. Again, you don't have a clue.

Get a job in marketing. "Intel empowers its software partners" is just a perfect platitude.

You say this as though gold is like any other supply/demand situation. And as though people care about the fate of miners. Its way fuzzier than that. Any owner is a potential supplier. They can supply all they own and it costs nothing to do so. This is far different to a usual supply/demand curve where people who demand consume and then want more of the same thing, again for the purpose of consuming. If 5% of owners decide they want to just sell right now, its a massive flood of supply and it could very well shut down many mines. Who cares? Another 5% of owners might want to sell next year. And after that. News flash: it happens with stocks, bonds, houses and many other assets. If you don't understand that gold production could go very close to zero, you don't understand the dynamics here. It isn't like the supply/demand dynamic of say oil.

Think about it some more, its not rational. If it costs $1500 at the margin to produce something and there is no demand for that good above $1000 what happens? Price drops. Production drops until you reach the level at which the marginal cost equals the price, which may mean zero production. The demand curve cares not what the supply curve is. This article is a pack of nonsense. If I produce something no one wants, do I just arbitrarily get to sell it at the cost to produce? What a ridiculous concept.

Intel Valued As Though New Technologies Will Bust, But I Disagree [View article]

Here I was thinking an operating system was "software". Whats next, because ADSK produces software which allows architects to "concentrate on design" instead of the software, they are "infrastructure" ? Replacing Coke and Pepsi with "Derek & Daniel's Cola" is "just not going to happen" either. Yet it's asinine to call Coke or Pepsi a "utility". The word "utility" is not an analogue for any business which is stable and/or has a seemingly insurmountable competitive position.

Every industry with a custom chip is not "ripe" for intel. Are you forgetting the billions of embedded systems which already exist in the world? This isn't some "new" market. Who makes all those chips? Instead of assuming Intel is going to just waltz into any market it likes and make money, actually check out what goes on in those markets. You think TI for example will just sit back? They have a better chance in such markets, they make thousands upon thousands of different chips with different specs for different customers and purposes.

Its downright laughable to just assume Intel can just "decide" to do something an it happens. Its not "Intel's world and we just live in it".

Intel Valued As Though New Technologies Will Bust, But I Disagree [View article]

Everyone is trying to do the same. Difference is, this go around, several other players have lots of throughput to get the process right. For many years in x86, Intel had so much of the throughput that no one else could learn what is an extraordinarily complex process just for the cpu, let alone a soc. This go around, who knows if someone takes a lead, and if so, who. There is a general lack of appreciation amongst investors of how good a job Intel did, then what scale it lead to, and how much that process fed on itself.

This is stupid, plain and simple. There is no economic law that "no one will sell gold below replacement cost voluntarily". It costs more than $10 to build a 10 year old PC from scratch, yet you can find them on ebay for that. Why?

You are confusing the concept that no one will voluntarily PRODUCE gold at a cost of $1000 if the price is $500 with vice versa. It doesn't work both ways. What is next on your "economic laws" list? That no one will sell a stock for less than what they bought it for?

Hence, what you state is far from "axiomatic". Perhaps you have no idea what the definition of axiom is. Did you think saying "axiomatic" and "log scale" would baffle people? Growth is either exponential or not, what "scale" you show it on is meaningless. Get an education .

Electric utilities, gas utilities, certain telco assets are "utilities" by government mandate, due to the physical (and to some extent economic) characteristics of those businesses, it has nothing to do with innovation. Oil producers aren't utilities in any sense of the word, there is no "Public Utility Commission" deciding the allowed return on capital on those business. Perhaps you meant oil pipelines, which have much in common with electric and gas utilities (and certain telco assets) in that there are physical and economic reasons for making them as such.

Software companies and manufacturing companies don't have such economic, real property or license issues. They either stay in business or don't. None of those companies you list have anything even remotely in common with electric utilities, gas utilities, pipelines or some telecommunication assets.

Intel Valued As Though New Technologies Will Bust, But I Disagree [View article]

They may very well have several hundred billion dollar market caps. But if you have to invest $200 billion now to have a company worth $250 billion in 10 years, I'd suggest that is losing. There are several very large industries where virtually all the players make awful returns on capital. Over the long run it has been true in airlines, car manufacturing, TV (and various other appliance) manufacturing, starting to be true in PC manufacturing, textile manufacturing, its becoming true in the media business. I don't watch every industry nor have an encyclopedic knowledge of business history, but I'd bet there are many, many more.

Intel Valued As Though New Technologies Will Bust, But I Disagree [View article]

Ashraf - one more thing - you are correct in that RISC/CISC certainly isn't the most important aspect of the x86 v ARM discussion. The most important aspect is more economic/competitive than technical.

But the dividing line is that Intel dominated x86 (or "not moving fairly large computers with a specific instruction set" ) and everyone knows Intel from that space. They don't dominate ARM and its impossible right now to know if they will. If you want to call it mobile v desktop or energy focused v not energy focused or whatever, there is a dividing line there somewhere, and the instruction sets aren't the same and the branding isn't the same and Intel isn't dominating. Surely we can agree on that.

Intel Valued As Though New Technologies Will Bust, But I Disagree [View article]

Be quiet. You haven't even ever studied chip architecture. You have read a couple of papers. If you think that I couldn't design a truly awful, inefficient instruction set you havent a clue what you are talking about.

Intel Valued As Though New Technologies Will Bust, But I Disagree [View article]

Ashraf - All such statements are due to "data" which comes from tests which test Intel's (and AMD, but its usually Intel chips) very best work in x86 (both design and manufacture) v relatively new ARM designs. Just because Intel has been absolutely brilliant in squeezing out performance in x86, and the current "data" doesnt appear to show much of a difference, the fact remains x86 is inferior. People can debate the degree.

I know you follow NVIDIA and I'd bet you have seen charts showing the relative improvement of GPU performance v CPU performance over the last 10 years. Now, if you were to go back 10 years, the "data" of the time would suggest a not gigantic difference. Yet it was obvious, again due to the amount of chip space doing things not related to the task at hand, that it was only a matter of time before the architecture yielded very different "data". And we both know the results. So called "data" isn't real understanding.

- Sorry - one edit: not to suggest the CISC/RISC differential will be anything in the ballpark of the GPU/CPU differential. It won't.

There is nothing "good" about being nice to people who show confidence and ignorance at the same time. One at a time is fine, people who show both simultaneously should be given a mouthful.

Intel Valued As Though New Technologies Will Bust, But I Disagree [View article]

I'm saying in 10 years there is a good chance that no company in the space will dominate like Intel has. That means no players in the space "win" as far as profitability is concerned. Hence I don't want to own any chip companies, least of all AMD. Understand? Markets aren't always one player loses other player wins. Sometimes everybody loses.